Maria's Last Diet

Your Weight Control Problem and What Someone Close to You Knows

by Maria's Last Diet

Does your significant other know things about you and your weight problem that you don't know?
This is a chance to learn things that will really help you lose the weight.

Have your significant other take this quiz and listen carefully to the answers.

To your significant other: either write your answers to the following or talk to her about them.
Try to be as straight as you can.

QUIZ

1. Do you think she denies her problems with weight?

2. Does she rationalize her eating problem away?

3. Does she blame others too much for her problem?

4. Does she hide things from you about her eating habits?

5. Does she listen when you voice your concerns?

6. Do you think she suffers a lot because she is overweight?

7. In what ways do you see her suffer?

8. Does she ask you for weight-loss support enough?

9. How would you describe her self-esteem?

10. Does she procrastinate when it comes to doing something about her weight?

11. Do you think she really wants to lose the weight?

12. Do you think she engages in self-defeating behaviors?

13. Do you feel frustrated by her problems in this area?

14. Do you think she has what it takes to lose the weight?

15. Does she have a real understanding of her difficulties with eating properly and weight control?

16. What bothers you most about her problem with losing the weight?

17. Does she have the strength to face her shortcommings?

18. Do you wish she would talk to you about this problem more?

19. Are you worried about her health?

20. Do you think she handles stress well?

21. Do you want her to lose the weight?

22. Would you like to help her?

23. How do you think you could help her?

24. Do you think she would accept your help?

25. Do you think your answers will open up a helpful dialog with her?

 

It's good to step out of ourselves and see what someone else thinks of us. Some of your significant other's answers might be ones you didn't expect at all. They might even be things you've never thought of before.

This is a great learning tool. Open your mind and heart to your significant other's ideas and feelings about you and your weight problem might just give you the totally fresh viewpoint you need.

Losing the Weight Can't Happen Without "Giving Back"

by Maria's Last Diet

If you are working hard to achieve something as important as losing the weight, if you are asking yourself to eat less, exercise more, keep track, figure out your feelings, change your behavior, keep your focus, persist, not give up, resist being tempted, be patient, ride out setbacks—then you need to give yourself something in return. What might you give yourself? It’s an individual matter but a pivotal one. Think about how you might add a little extra TLC to your life while you are losing the weight.

Dieting Tips About Having "Good" Cheats

by Maria's Last Diet

For people who are trying to change a behavior, it almost never goes smoothly. There are bumps in the road, places where you may slip backward for the moment. Slipping back into old patterns while you are trying ever so hard to do things differently is to be expected and even welcomed. As human beings, we simply do not learn without trial and error, without making mistakes.

Cheating while you are dieting provides you with a chance for critical learning. A review of research on error management training reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology showed that when people were encouraged to make errors and then learn from those errors, they outperformed those who were simply taught how to do things the exact right way. The findings in this review show how making mistakes helps people learn to plan, monitor and revise their strategies for solving problems—a perfect recipe for success.

Slips are an integral part of the process of change. If you are dieting, a slip can teach you a great deal about how to change your eating patterns. You can use a cheat as a power tool, especially if you are willing to think about it and not just beat yourself up over it. You can carefully consider how it happened, why it happened, and you can use that knowledge to create a plan that will be better for you in the future.

Here's how.

Find a relaxed time after your cheat. Take a paper and pencil and write your answers to the following:

1. How was I feeling before I cheated on my diet?
2. Was I reacting to something?
3. Have I reacted that way before?
4. Do I react that way in other areas of my life?
5. Would I say this is a pattern with me?
6. Have I ever found a way to break this pattern?
7. How did I feel about breaking my dieting regimen?
8. Do I have confidence in my ability to do something different?
9. Is there a high-risk cheating situation coming up for me within the next week?
10. Write out five strategies that you can use to help you deal with the high-risk situation you anticipate.

These are steps in the right direction. By taking these steps, you will be learning new behavior. This is the way to break your habit of cheating while dieting. You will begin to achieve a number of small successes and this will build your confidence, even if you still have moments when you fail. Over time, you will have fewer and fewer slips.

Practice the 10 steps outlined above and you will be able to use cheating as a tool for permanent change. You will be taking hold of a cheat and using it to your advantage. This will give you invaluable emotional and thinking skills that will support you every step of the way to weight-loss success.

Success in any endeavor does not depend on doing everything right. Success has much more to do with what happens when things don't go just right. Learning from your dieting mistakes will sharpen your problem solving techniques.

Use the steps, and lose the weight you want to lose. Try it—it really works.

Is the Weight Loss Challenge Getting to You? Try This.

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you tried "Find Your Issue" yet? The link is to the right of this blog post. "Find Your Issue" is there for you when you run up against any particular dieting and weight-loss challenge.

When you need a weight-loss tip or a dieting tip, just go to "Find Your Issue". Select the problem from the list and enter it in "search". Or, enter your own description of the problem and get free weight-loss help right on the spot.

When you are working hard to lose the weight, you should be able to get the help you need when you need it. This will make dieting and weight loss a lot easier for you.

You can think of this weight-loss support tool as a set of instructions, much like the ones you get when you buy something new that you need to put together. Dieting and weight loss are like a puzzle with many pieces. There is your motivation, your willpower, your perseverance, your frustration, and your unique personality. If you have the right information, the right examples, the right kind of weight-loss help just when you need it, you are less likely to become frustrated, and much more likely to hold on to your motivation and willpower.

Whatever obstacle you run up against as you are trying to lose the weight, use the "Find Your Issue" search tool. You can even use it before you run up against a problem. It's best to be prepared. You’ll be surprised at how much the dieting and weight-loss support tool will help you put the pieces of your lose-the-weight puzzle together.

A Weight Loss Plan for Holiday Eating

by Maria's Last Diet

In the holiday season, when there is so much pleasure as well as so much tension for all of us, you know what can happen to dieting and your weight-loss plans. The plan gets ignored, the goal gets farther away. But don't despair.

Believe it or not, feeling that you are capable of being a good dieter can carry you through the tempting situations. So, how do you get to feeling like a good dieter? One way to do it is to have a plan securely in place before you go to the party, dinner, family celebration, etc. Being armed with a detailed plan for how you will handle each situation greatly increases your belief that you can stick to it. This will make all the difference.

Overeating: Resisting the Urge

by Maria's Last Diet

In his book Relapse Prevention, the psychologist G. Alan Marlatt reports that the most effective coping strategy for an urge is to detach yourself from it. Instead of identifying with the urge, remove yourself from it. That is how you can gain control over it.

The way to remove yourself from the urge is to think of it as a response to an external situation, instead of something coming from within you.

First of all, you need to recognize and label an urge when it occurs — tell yourself that's what it is. Then, instead of indulging, simply allow the urge to occur without giving in to it.

It's not really as hard as it sounds. Here is a technique you can use to observe the urge to overeat when it occurs, and then let it run its course without being controlled by it.

The technique is called "urge surfing". Let's see how it might work. Suppose you ate a normal-sized portion. Then you get the urge to eat more.

Here's what to do. Instead of giving in to the urge, think of that urge as a feeling that you get, small at first, growing in intensity, then reaching a peak before subsiding. It is a lot like an ocean wave that starts out small, crests, and then breaks. Urge surfing is based on this picture of an ocean wave.

So, when an urge comes, imagine it like the ocean wave, and imagine yourself as a novice surfer. You are learning to ride the wave and keep your balance instead of being thrown over by it. Since you are new at being a surfer, you'll need to practice riding these waves.

The more you become proficient at this urge surfing, the more proficient you will become at keeping your balance. Eventually, the urges will weaken and lose their power. You will be able to easily ride them out until they subside.

How the Placebo Effect Can Help in Losing the Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

The placebo effect is a result that is not caused by any particular medicine, treatment, or other therapeutic remedy, but rather is caused by a person's beliefs and expectations.

A discussion of this subject appears in a 2007 article in the Journal of Psychological Science, written by Alan J. Crum and Ellen J. Langer. These psychologists describe the following placebo studies:

• People drinking placebo coffee (no caffeine), who thought it was real coffee, experienced increased heart rate
• People who came into contact with "faux" poison ivy broke out in very real rashes
• People who were put to sleep and were told they were given a knee operation reported as much relief from pain and swelling in their knees two years later as those who had real operations (Nothing was done to the "placebo" subjects, except making tiny cuts in their knees to look like there was surgery.)
• The placebo effect occurs even when there is no fake procedure or pill. The deterioration of cancer patients has a lot to do with their negative beliefs and expectations about cancer.
• People were told that the work they did in their everyday lives was really good exercise, and qualified as an "active" lifestyle. These people did not take on any new exercise regimen, or increase in their activity levels. They simply had a shift in mindset by being told they were already exercising in a very good way.
   
  Do you know what happened? These people got significantly healthier, even more fit over the course of just four weeks, including losing a couple of pounds without dieting. This happened just because they "thought" they were engaging in very effective exercise.

Such is the power of the placebo effect.

In the case of a weight problem, you don't need any deception or any false treatments. What you do need is a mindset that increases your feeling of mastery and gives you the sense that you are very capable of losing weight.

Everything we talk about at Maria's Last Diet is aimed at building this kind of mindset. We think the placebo effect works even more powerfully then the best diet in the world. Your belief in yourself as being able to do it is what makes the diet work.

Holiday Mood Food...What's a Dieter To Do?

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you in the holiday mood for food? Isn’t everybody, dieters included?

Here are the holiday hazards you face as a dieter.

• old holiday habits
• being easily influenced
• lacking confidence
• no prior practice
• no plan
• unrealistic expectations
• being tempted

Let’s take only a couple of these holiday stumbling points and see what you can do about them. The entire list, which is an awfully big mouthful, is too much to swallow at one sitting. (Is this bite-size piece of wisdom priming you for a dieter’s holiday?)

Let’s take unrealistic expectations
Do you expect yourself, I mean really expect yourself, to stay on your diet despite all the anything-but-diet food that will be there to tempt you? If you expect perfection and then you blow it, you might start the all too familiar process of getting disappointed and depressed. Of course, you can also get disappointed and depressed by restraining yourself and depriving yourself of those sumptuous holiday delights that everyone else is having no problem devouring.

Too much in the way of depressed feelings or disappointment may turn a diet lapse or dietary restrictiveness into the old you again. The old you is the you who might have been escaping difficult feelings by overeating or eating what was most fattening.

So what do you do? Is this a trap? Are you supposed to not expect yourself to stay on your diet? Not exactly. What you can do is be careful of expecting too much from yourself. That is a sure way to disappoint yourself. Put in food terms, don’t bite off more than you can chew. In other words, for the holidays aim low. Don’t go making your holiday one of those quests for excellence. Be satisfied with a C+ in sticking to your diet plan. After all, a C+ at holiday time is far better than an F.

Let’s take being tempted
When you are trying to diet and you give in to temptation, you could say that you are letting your short-term goal, which is the desire to indulge, win out over your long-term goal, which is to lose the weight. This can spiral into things you don’t want to happen. You go for seconds after you’ve just eaten a full plate. You don’t wait long enough for the reminder “diet plan” to makes its way to the front of your mind. What you end up with is a self-control failure.

There’s no getting around it ―holiday time is and always will be filled with temptation. For someone who struggles with eating and weight, the biggest temptation is usually food. Long-term goals have trouble standing up. The situation isn’t designed for your long-term weight loss goal to prevail. It’s difficult during the food-centered holidays to keep your distance from tempting food, and stick close to (or even find) diet food. The “no-no” foods that you usually don’t keep in the house are directly in front of you on the table. The diet foods that you usually keep on hand are nowhere to be found.

So, what do you do?

Prepare yourself. You should carefully consider beforehand what your diet plan and your willpower are up against. Acknowledge the strength it will take to get through holiday celebrations in a good way. Then―very important―you can ease up on your self-control in other areas, for the time being. You can put all your self-control in one basket, the “I’m going to stay on my diet plan as much as possible” basket. Don’t use up your self-control in other ways. Go easy on yourself. Take the pressure off however you can. Save your self-control strength for your eating.

Here’s one more way to deal with temptation. Make a plan in advance so at those moments when you are face to face with temptation, you have something ready to do. You can practice a strategy until you know it like the back of your hand. Then it will take little mental energy to put it into play. It will be, in a sense, automatic, and effortless.

Here’s what our friend Samantha did. She practiced. She practiced and practiced way before it was holiday time. Her family helped. They all worked together making big, enticing meals, and they set all the fixings right out on the table under the very nose of dieting Samantha. She practiced not going overboard in whatever way she could think of. She got up and walked away from the table. She drank a lot of sparkling water with lemon. She excused herself and went into another room to write a paragraph reminding herself of her goals. She had one bite of two gooey desserts. Sound foolish to you? Not really. Practice made (almost) perfect. When the holiday actually came around, Samantha had lots of practice (not food) under her belt, and she sailed through the occasion with only a minor slip.

If you consider using these pieces of advice to advance your cause, remember to take them with a grain of salt. Make plenty of room for a modification or two that you’ll think of. It’s always best when the ingredients of any recipe suit your own personal taste.

Losing the Weight Can Spread to Your Spouse Too

by Maria's Last Diet

Your family environment is very important in terms of losing weight, and this should be kept in mind. A study published in the 2008 International Journal of Obesity, showed that when one spouse received weight-loss help, it had a significant effect on the other spouse. There were definite, measurable weight-control benefits for the spouse NOT on a specific weight-loss program. There was a solid ripple effect.

To Lose the Weight, What's the Most Important Thing to Do?

by Maria's Last Diet

What would you say is the most important thing you can do to lose weight?

Take your time.

You might think this is a silly thing to say to someone who wants to lose weight. Yet it's a powerful, effective idea.

Thinking about it...

Planning for it...

They are different, they are necessary, and each one needs to be done in its own good time. This is what the "time" in "take your time" means.

First comes thinking about it, the it being your weight gain, your overeating, and your interest in solving the problem. Thinking about it means to consider the value of dieting and losing the weight. Thinking about it means envisioning how losing the weight will change your life for the better.

Thinking about it is the first thing. Then you need to plan exactly how to do it and that's where "take your time" comes in again. This is when you begin to think about more action-oriented steps, even though you are not yet actually taking the steps. In this planning-for-it phase, you sharpen your goal and plan when, where, and how you will act to reach that goal.

So when you feel you are putting pressure on yourself, rushing to do something on the spot about losing weight, don't jump into action right away. Even if someone else tells you to move ahead because you've dallied too long and you are much too heavy for your own good—even then, take your time.